Garden Update: June 2015

I can't believe this is our 4th year container gardening on our little patio! Every year we keep a monthly log on the blog from spring through fall to document how our garden is fairing. We learn on hindsight what works and what doesn't for us, and we try and improve our methods. This year, with all the rainy weather, our garden is off to a sloooooooooow start.

We lost our peach tree over the winter, but otherwise, the berries and the orange tree are still going strong.

We have our usual carrots,

and some herbs.

I learned from past gardens that it is a pain to grow brassicas (even though I love them!), so we are sticking to swiss chard and molokhia (Egyptian spinach). The worms don't seem to bother these.

We also adjusted the number and type of tomatoes we have. In years past, we were big fans of indeterminates. Last year, we got ambitious and had 15 tomato plants growing in buckets. The patio was practically a tomato forest before the freaky hailstorm destroyed most of them! So this time around, we are growing the determinate varieties instead. They are bushier, more compact plants, and should be a better fit for the space that we have. Oh, and we only have 6 modest buckets of tomatoes. So much more manageable! Of course, we still love tomatoes. We started over 80 plants in the spring and have most of them planted out at Zach's mom's!

We aren't shying away from the peppers the way we are with the tomatoes though. This year, we have 20 pots of peppers of a dozen different varieties. We also have 4 buckets on the bottom row with eggplants. Right now, those are being devoured by flea beetles. Yuck.

We are trying cucumbers again. I have my fingers crossed that they won't be the whitefly magnets they were 2 years ago!

Apart from these plants, we also have a couple of new things we are trying out this year. We are growing potatoes in a grow sack,

a variety of wax beans in our beet box,

and 2 ground cherry plants. I love ground cherries and always spend too much on them at the farmers' market. These plants seem to be thriving and putting out a good number of fruits. My hope is that they will feed me sufficiently so I don't have to buy any at the market this year!

What about you? What do you have planted in your garden this season, and how are they fairing? We'd love to know!